19 photos of Friday night's rainbow and fiery sunset in Vancouver

The skies over much of the Metro Vancouver region lit up with brilliant colours on Friday evening.

People took to social media this evening to post photos of a rainbow just as the sun was beginning to dip under the cloud ceiling to the west. It provided for the perfect conditions for a rainbow, and from certain vantage points there were even double rainbows.

The rainbows later gave way to a brilliantly fiery sunset of yellow, orange, red, and pink colours, which happens when light reflects and scatters off particles such as cloud droplets or air pollution. Just after sunrise or before sunset, when the angle of the sun and the horizon is less than 10%, sunlight becomes red as a result of refraction for all colours except those with a reddish hue.